Thank you, Mayor Emanuel

Rahm, thank you for your excellent service. Since you took over this city, we have experienced tremendous prosperity and good governance after more than a century of constant corruption and cronyism.

There is no question Chicago is better today than at any other point in its history. And through it all, you have gotten very little credit. Many have criticized the hard decisions you have needed to make to keep our city functioning.

There is no way we can afford to keep high schools with 50 students open when our financial situation is so dire. These same people also ignore the work you have done to improve disadvantaged neighborhoods, and indeed in some instances — like your idea to invest nearly $100 million in a new police academy on the West Side — have actively protested those decisions.

There are difficult problems you have been working diligently on and that remain works in progress: violent crime on the South and West sides that permeates through the entire city, new transit needs and incomprehensible pensions deficits.

I believe you remain the best person to continue working on these issues. I fear that your departure will unleash a clown show of crooked aldermen and impractical activists who promise the moon to the city. I fear that your departure will reverse the progress we have made as a city. Because so few people have said it over the past seven years, I will say it once more: Thank you. You are the best mayor this great city could have dreamed of. Peter Saul, Gold Coast Send letters to letters@suntimes.com. Please include your neighborhood or hometown and a phone number for verification purposes.